“I don’t have a clue.” I hand him another biscuit.
“It really works. No shit. The goal is not to think. When you need food, your cells will let you know, and then you take care of it. I don’t think about meals anymore.” He talks with his mouth full. “I don’t plan on having this or that or not having this or that or feel I have to eat at a certain time of day. I let my cells tell me and go with it. I’ve lost fifteen pounds in five weeks, and I’m toying with the idea of writing a book about it.
“I’m worried you’re smoking again.”
“I don’t know why the hell you keep saying that.”
“Someone’s been smoking in your van.”
“I think it smells pretty good in here.”
“It didn’t smell pretty good yesterday.”
“A couple fishing buddies of mine. Something about driving with the windows wide open when it’s hot as hell. People feel like lighting up.”
“Maybe you could be a bit more evasive,” I reply.
“What’s all this shit about cigarettes? Like suddenly you’re the smoking police.”
“You remember what Rose went through.” I remind him of my secretary Rose’s miserable death from lung cancer.
“Rose didn’t smoke, not even once her whole life. She didn’t have any bad habits and still got cancer, and maybe that’s why. I’ve decided if you try too hard, everything gets worse, so what’s the point in depriving yourself so you can die prematurely in good health? I wish she was still around. It’s not the same. Damn, I hate missing people. I still walk in your office and think she’s going to be there with that old IBM typewriter and an attitude. Some people should never be gone, and those that should hang around forever.”
“You recently were diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma and had several lesions removed. The last thing you need is to start smoking again.”
“Smoking doesn’t cause skin cancer,” he says.
“It triples your chances.”
“Okay. So now and then I bum a cigarette when someone else is lighting up. It’s no big deal.”
“
“The shit Lucy worries about will never be proved.” He goes back to that because he doesn’t want to be lectured. “Nobody’s been accused or is going to be. Jaime’s gone for good from the DA’s office, and that’s what people like Farbman wanted, plain and simple. He must feel like he won the lottery.”
“Jaime certainly doesn’t feel that way, despite her protests to the contrary.”
“She seems pretty happy with what she’s doing now.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“She just doesn’t like how it happened, because she was forced. How would you feel if someone ran you off from your career after all you did to get there?”
“I’d like to believe I wouldn’t entice someone I supposedly love to do something destructive because I wanted out of the relationship,” I answer.
“Yeah, but breaking up with Lucy doesn’t have anything to do with Jaime getting run out of the DA’s office.”
“It has everything to do with it. Jaime uncreated herself,” I reply. “She didn’t like what she saw, and she smashed it, destroyed it, so she could start all over. But that doesn’t work. It never does. You can’t rebuild yourself on the foundation of a lie. You helped her with the security and camera system. Is she carrying a gun now, too?”
“I’ve given her a couple of shooting lessons at an indoor range here.”
“Whose idea?”
“Hers.”
“Most New Yorkers don’t carry guns. It’s not part of their culture. It’s not a natural default. Why does she suddenly think she needs a gun?”
“Maybe from being down here, where she doesn’t exactly belong, and let’s face it, anything related to Dawn Kincaid is scary. I think what she’s doing now has spooked her, and she got used to guns from Lucy, who’s always armed. She probably takes her Glock into the friggin’ shower. Maybe Jaime got used to guns because of living with them.”
“Just like she got used to having an LLC called Anna Copper that started out as a somewhat spiteful joke because Lucy was hurt? Yes, Groucho Marx, who was heavily invested in Anaconda Copper, a mining company that tanked during the Great Depression and is blamed for polluting the environment. You don’t see what’s going on here, do you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I do.”
“You invest in something that seems hugely valuable but is toxic, and you lose everything. It almost does you in.”
“You ever listen to those old radio programs of his?
“I should worry about her shit, and so should you. It’s one thing to offer objective assistance in a case, and it’s another to be drawn into an agenda, especially a vindictive one, a highly personal one, a dysfunctional one. Jaime has all the incentive imaginable to make some big point, to re-create herself with a vengeance. There are other factors as well. I think you know what I’m referring to.”
Marino makes loud crumpling noises as he digs into the Bojangles’ bag, pulling out more napkins, as we cross a bridge that spans the Little Ogeechee River.
“I just hope you’re careful,” I continue, lecturing him again. “I’m not going to interfere if you choose to consult with other people, if you change your professional status with the CFC, but you need to be very cautious when it comes to Jaime. Do you understand why it might be difficult for you to be completely clearheaded about her?”
He wipes his mouth and fingers as we pass over Forest River now, where shrimp boats are moored and seagulls are congregated on a long wooden pier.
“It’s dangerous when people are propelled by powerful motivations they aren’t aware of. That’s all I need to say.” I don’t expect him to understand or to be persuaded.
Jaime feeds his ego in a way I don’t, because I refuse to manipulate him. I don’t charm and flatter him into doing what I want. I’m blunt and honest, and for the most part it annoys him.
“Listen,” he says. “I’m not stupid. I know she’s got other things going on and Lucy complicated everything. She’s so damn wide open, and I remember her coming into the DA’s office, acting like what was going on between them not only wasn’t a secret, it was something to brag about.”
Just ahead is the Savannah Mall, where I ate a seafood lunch with Colin Dengate last time I was here, and I try to remember when that was. Maybe three years ago, when I was still in Charleston and he was battling a spate of hate crimes in coastal Georgia.
“It shouldn’t have needed to be a secret,” I reply. “In fact, it should have been something to brag about if two people love each other.”
“Well, let’s be honest,” Marino says. “Not everybody feels the way you do. The two of them getting together isn’t the typical fairy-tale couple. It’s not like they’re Prince William and Kate. It’s not like everybody celebrated Jaime and Lucy. Just my opinion, but I think Jaime wanted out of it because it was causing her big problems. All that shit on the Internet, like suddenly she’d been voted off some reality show. Dyke DA, Lesbo Law. It was ugly, and she bailed, and now she’s sorry, even if she won’t admit it.”
“I’m interested in why you think she’s sorry.”
We’re on a narrow two-lane road called Middle Ground Drive, winding through a state-owned tract of land thick with underbrush and pines, not a sign of human habitation. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation keeps the location for their medical examiner’s office and forensic labs as isolated as possible for a reason.
